Your Scriptwriting Partner

Last week, I showed you 3 visual tricks to keep your audience engaged.

Today, I'll show you how tweaking your script's structure will keep them watching even longer.

The good news? This is easy to implement in almost any niche.

Structuring information (so your audience doesn't get confused):

Visual cues help your audience understand your video's structure.

But you need to CREATE that structure first.

So let's look at 3 simple ways to organise information so your viewer knows what to expect.

(And never gets lost once the video starts.)

For fun, we're using past/present clients of mine to show you this in action! (N.B. I didn't personally contribute to examples 1 and 2)

#1 - Limited Categories (3, 5, 7)

Don't let your script become an endless list of topics.

Create categories.

Ali Abdaal does this in most of his videos to keep the information neatly packed into a finite number of discussion areas.

Unless you're making a video like "33 things I wish I'd known before age 33" where you're deliberately listing loads of things fast...

...limit the number of categories to 3, 5 or 7.

It's just easier for our brains to process.

And, by the way - here's what happened when I used 1of10 to generate some thumbnails about Ali's all-time favourite topic:

Deffo gonna send these to his WhatsApp (which he will absolutely not reply to).

#2 - Exponential Stakes

This is a classic for entertainment channels, but can be applied to education as well.

Once you have your categories, brainstorm whether you can arrange them to naturally increase tension as the video progresses.

Often, this will come down to increasing price, like Mike Shake's recent crossbow video:

Notice Mike also limiting the number of categories to 5 👀

But you can also ratchet up the tension in other ways.

• Gradually increase the complexity of the topic (education).
• Escalate the potential forefeit in case of failure (entertainment).
• Start with low-lift advice, end with life-changing advice (education).

Oh, and once again - here's what happened when I prompted 1of10 with a video I genuinely think Mike should make 😂

Might send these to Mike's WhatsApp as well. At this point, I am literally just flexing about who I've got on WhatsApp.

Soooo... about these thumbnails.

1of10 have just launched their title and thumbnail generator... and it's pretty sweet!

Here's a thumbnail it created for my podcast channel, Making It, based on the title: "YouTube Scriptwriter Reveals: My AI Writing Process"

Creepy? Yes. Cool? Also, yes.

It "understands" your channel's thumbnail style and creates ideas based on your previous content + outlier ideas from across YouTube.

So if you struggle to come up with ideas, titles and thumbnails for your channel, try 1of10 and let me know how you get on!

Try it here (aff link)!

#3 - Grouping

If you really can't reduce your categories to fewer than 7, you risk overwhelming your viewer.

But we can solve this with "grouping".

In a recent video I worked on with a software channel, we had 11 tool categories to cover.

This was too many to list one after the other.

Instead, we looked for commonalities between the 11 categories and divided them up into 3 groups - "Foundations", "Finance" and "Day-to-day".

Now, each group contained only 3/4 categories, and gave the video a distinct 3-act structure, which was cool.

(video is a 2/10, yay!)

So, if you have too many topics... try grouping them.

And, to finish, here's some AI thumbnail inspo generated by 1of10 for this channel:

Now I just need to figure out how to trap them inside a computer so we can make this.

That's all for this week.

Any questions? You can to reply to this email and I'll get back to you.

Speak soon,
George 👋

Things are looking a little different around here, huh? 👀

I thought it was time for a visual re-vamp.

Of course, visuals are way less important than the content itself... but a lack of clutter does make a newsletter easier to consume.

Funnily enough... the same goes for YouTube.

So, in the spirit of a highly visual edition of the newsletter...

...here are 3 visual tricks you can write into your next script to keep your audience more engaged (so they watch longer) 👀

#1 - Hook Checklist

This is common - but more YouTubers should use it to set clear expectations.

Most videos solve several micro-problems before they can solve the main problem.

• e.g. to solve the main problem of "which laptop to buy in 2025", a video would have to solve micro-problems like "what each feature does and how they rank in comparison to each other"

So list out the most interesting 3 problems your video solves in the hook, ending with the main problem:

"By the end of this video, you'll know:

• Which laptop supports the most innovative use of AI.
• Why RAM isn't as important as you might think anymore.
• And, ultimately, which laptop is right for small business owners in 2025."

List the topics in approximately the same order as they appear in the video so your audience knows what to expect.

#2 - Structural Reminder

Human brains gravitate towards structure.

So if your video feels like a long series of "and then, and then, and then"...

...your viewers will get bored, confused, or forget where the video is actually headed.

So, to keep your viewers oriented, give them regular visual cues about how far through the video they are.

A video I was working on recently had a lot of information packed in, so to keep it nice and digestible, I sketched this visual anchor for us to return to at the start and end of every segment:

(It looks like this in the final video, which is super cool:)

Other Structural Reminder Ideas:

• Countdown Timer - like old school Mrwhosetheboss, the timer slowly counts down to 0 by the end of the segment.
• Segment Icons - each segment has its own icon which appears when the segment begins.
• Written Cue - physcially write something on a post-it note or whiteboard at the start of a new segment.

Some ideas will require custom graphics, but many are super simple to pull off without crazy editing.

#3 - Visual metaphor

A visual metaphor can tie your whole video together.

It's essentially the same as #2, except it has a storytelling function.

e.g. this video from James Jani uses a jigsaw metaphor to explain the story of Sam Bankman-Fried.

Not only does the jigsaw idea keep us oriented within the video's structure...

...but it inherently ties into the story. We're putting together "the jigsaw pieces" of Sam's life to understand him better.

Other Visual Metaphor Ideas:

• Dominoes - each falling domino sets up the next segment.
• Blueprint - commonly used concept in thumbnails to convey a complete solution to a problem. Use this in the video too.
• Map - present your video as a "journey" and use stops on a map to represent your segments.

I'm curious - which of these could you incorporate into your next video?

If you’ve already enrolled in my audience avatar mini-course, the YouTube Scriptwriting Compass, you'll know how important understanding who your audience is.

But understanding who they’re NOT is just as important.

After all, attracting the wrong viewers can devastate a YouTube channel:

• They loved that random "drama" video you made, but won’t click your usual content. They're a dead subscriber.
• They misunderstand the value proposition of your channel, subscribe, then only watch 20s of your next video because it’s not what they expected. They'll wreck your retention.
• They have no intention of ever buying your products/services. You'll waste time trying to convince them.

At the end of the day, you need to make it crystal clear who your videos are for.

It will affect your scripts, your topic choices... even the title and thumbnail.

So here are 11 questions to figure out who your videos are NOT for (so your content aligns with your broader YouTube goals).

🎯 GOALS

1. Who might seem similar to your avatar, but is ultimately pursuing different long-term goals than what your content supports?
2. What types of success or outcomes do you not help your viewers pursue?

🧭 POSITIONING

1. Who might misinterpret the role your content plays — for example, expecting entertainment instead of education, or tactics instead of frameworks?
2. What kind of viewer might click your video for the wrong reasons (topic, title, trend) but be turned off by the actual delivery?
3. Who might apply your content in a completely different context than it was intended for — and get confused or frustrated as a result?

🧠 PERSONALITY & HOBBIES

1. What kinds of personality traits or communication preferences would make someone unlikely to resonate with your tone or teaching style?
2. Who might prefer a totally different type of creator energy — slower, faster, more formal, more casual, etc.?

😣 CHALLENGES & PAIN POINTS

1. What types of challenges does your content not aim to solve — even if your viewers might assume you do?
2. Who’s still stuck at a level of frustration that your content assumes they’ve moved past?
3. What kinds of problems require a mindset, toolset, or solution you explicitly don’t teach?

💳 PURCHASING PROCESS

1. What kind of viewer would never be willing to pay you a dime for products or services you offer?

​To see how drastically an audience avatar can affect a video's hook, check out this article I wrote last year.